From all that I could see and hear in Cuba, I felt thoroughly convinced that American intervention had amply justified itself, and that this noble island, after all its miseries and distractions, was now in a fair way to become as prosperous and happy as, by its natural advantages, it is entitled to be. The splendid work of cleansing and sanitation which the Americans have done in Havana I more fully appreciated after a brief inspection of a couple of unsanitated Spanish-American towns—Cartagena and Barranquilla. But cleaning-up and road-making, and the organization of public services, are not all that the Americans are doing. In the Cuban guide-book it was significant to note the number of places which owed their fame to having been the scene of this or that massacre or military execution. It would be premature, perhaps, to say that all that sort of thing is past and done with; but there will certainly not be much more of it; the United States will see to that. I am bound to confess that here, in my opinion, the Republic has “taken up the white man’s burden” very efficiently and in a very true sense.

The sense of prosperity was very strongly borne in upon me in Vedado, a suburb of Havana, whither I went to call upon an American gentleman, resident for many years in Cuba, to whom I had an introduction. Vedado is a great sun-baked stretch of ground between the low hills and the sea to the west of Havana, where handsome bungalow-villas are rising in great numbers. As yet it is in a somewhat raw and ragged condition; but there is evidence of wealth and activity on every hand.

My primary object in visiting Mr. Ogden (as I shall call him) was to inquire into the relations of the white and coloured races in Cuba.

“It is very obvious,” I said, “in the streets of Havana, that, if there is any colour-line here, it is not drawn anything like as strictly as in the Southern States. I see a good many black policemen; and there are black motor-men and conductors on the street-cars. Among the passengers in the cars there is no distinction of colour. In the Colon Cemetery, as I came down here, I noticed that, among the thirty heroes commemorated on the Firemen’s Monument, four seemed to be pure negroes; and there were negro traits in six or seven more. Is there really no colour discrimination at all?”

“In the sense of legal disability,” said Mr. Ogden, “there is none. Socially, of course, there is a good deal, though no hard-and-fast barrier is raised between the races. Each family, each individual, draws the colour-line according to taste. But, naturally, there is a tendency for the pure white to exclude the unmistakably coloured.”

“Would a white man lose caste on marrying a coloured woman?”

“Oh, very distinctly. I could tell you of several instances.”

“But there is no serious friction—no feud—between the races?”

“At present, no; but I’m not at all sure that a race problem may not declare itself when the new Constitution comes into force in February next. We shall then have the negro in politics; and that is how trouble always arises.”

“You fear a Cuban repetition of the Reconstruction time?”

“Yes, indeed I do. The negro is susceptible to every sort of political machination. Every carpet-bag demagogue can make a tool of him, and that the Cuban white men won’t stand for.”

“Meanwhile, however, there is no trouble? You have not any such Reign of Terror here as there is some parts of the Southern States?”

“No. Outrages on women are practically unknown here.”

“And how do you account for the difference between Cuba and the Southern States in respect to this class of crime?”

“Well, sir, I’m a Southern man myself, and all I can say is that the nigger here don’t seem to me the same as he is at home. I believe it is partly a real difference of race. |The Pick of the Basket.| You see, most of the slave-ships used to touch at Havana before they went on to Charleston or New Orleans; and the Cuban planters used to make a study of the different races and tribes, and select the best types. The daughter of a very wealthy planter—she’s an old lady now—has told me all about it. They knew precisely the qualities of the different breeds. Some were best fitted for body-servants, some for field-work, some for handling stock, others for educating and making clerks and book-keepers of. So, you see, the Cubans got the pick of the basket, and only the lower class—the mere brawny animals—got to the United States.”

This theory did not strike me as wholly adequate to the case, nor did Mr. Ogden pretend that it was. But there may be something in it, and I commend it to the notice of students of negro ethnology.

“By-the-by,” Mr. Ogden continued, “there is a curious African survival among the negroes here—a sort of semi-religious society called the Ñanigo, which indulges in strange rites of its own, and occasionally in assassination.”

“When you say ‘semi-religious,’ do you mean Christian or pagan?”

“Oh, pagan entirely. The members are generally tattooed or decorated with scars and cicatrices. They come greatly to the front in Carnival time, when they parade the streets, carrying a sort of illuminated pagoda and making strange noises by grating gourds.”

The talk then strayed to politics, and Mr. Ogden gave me a no doubt one-sided, but evidently sincere, view of the situation.

“I take it,” said I, “that Cuba is now peaceful and contented?”

“Oh yes, fairly so,” said Mr. Ogden; “but capital is still shy of coming in, until the political condition is more stable.”

“What was the reason of President Palma’s downfall?”

“The sole reason was that he was too good for them—too honest, too scrupulous. Ninety-five per cent. of those who took active part in the revolution of 1906 were negroes, and the rest were, with very few exceptions, men of no standing whatever, either political or social.

“The revolution was largely worked by the editor of a popular paper, a very able man whose sole moral quality is a total lack of hypocrisy. He said quite frankly, ‘In the old days I was always in touch with the Spanish Governor, and all sorts of good things came my way. Now, on the other hand, there’s nothing doing, and it don’t suit me.’ For a short time I ran the English page of his paper for him; and once, when he wanted me to put in something that I knew to be a blazing lie, I said to him, ‘I wonder how you can reconcile it with either your principles or your policy to print such an utter falsehood.’ He slapped his right pocket, and said, ‘My principles are here;’ his left pocket, ‘and my policy here.’

“The chief of the secret service had warned Palma for some time that a revolution was brewing—that there was open talk in the cafés of his assassination or deportation. He only said, ‘Why, what is there to make a revolution about? Our credit is good, our public works are going forward, prosperity is spreading. Where should the revolution come from?’

“A party of men were suborned to enter the barracks of a company of rural guards, shoot all the men in their sleep, and seize their arms. This was to be the signal for a general rising; but the bandits were left in the lurch by their friends. Orders were given to take them alive or dead—preferably dead. Unfortunately they were taken alive, and have all been released by Mr. Taft, on the plea that their offence was political.

“Then a man got up a revolution in a remote province; which meant that he set a lot of niggers looting stores and carrying off canned salmon, and calico, and boots and shoes. A friend of his in Havana went down to find out the reason of this revolution. The leader explained that he had 7000 dollars of gambling debts which he couldn’t pay; and for that sum he would order off the revolution. The friend said: ‘You can’t have 7000, but I know of 3000 dollars allotted for a purpose that can stand over; I think I can get you that, and you can make a composition with your creditors.’ The leader agreed to this proposal, but Palma refused to sanction the deal, and the rising went on, and spread, and became serious.

“Palma confessed to me that the only troops he could rely on had only a few rounds of ammunition. |A Foreign Legion.| ‘Why, then,’ said I, ‘there’s only one thing to be done—we’ll telegraph to the Colt Manufacturing Company for twenty machine guns and a million rounds of ammunition; and I’ll organize the men to work them.’ Palma held up his hands in protest. ‘A million rounds! Why, that’s enough for a war!’

“The Colt Company could only deliver ten machine guns, but those we got; and I organized a foreign legion. It contained Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians—450 men in all. We were just ready for business when Mr. Taft arrived with the Peace Commission; and what followed I have never understood, and don’t understand to this day.

“We went on board the Des Moines to wait on Mr. Taft. He said to me, ‘Mr. Ogden, I understand you are an American citizen—then what are you doing in that uniform, and under arms? And that man there? And that man there?’ I replied, ‘Mr. Taft, I have lived in Cuba twelve years. This gentleman is an Englishman—he has been fifteen years here. This gentleman is French—he has been twenty years here. We have wives and children here; and we have formed ourselves into a foreign legion, because we think we have a right to protect our families and to preserve the peace.’

“‘What do you want me to do?’ said Mr. Taft. |Muzzling the Machine-Guns.| ‘The very thing you won’t do,’ said I. ‘How do you know?’ he said. ‘I’m a reasonable man, and I’m here to do something. How do you know it mayn’t be what you want?’

“‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘we want you to sit still, and smoke your cigar, and do nothing.’

“‘For how long?’

“‘For twenty-four hours—at most for forty-eight.’

“‘And meantime,’ said he, ‘you propose to keep the peace by committing an act of war?’

“‘It won’t be war, sir,’ I said. ‘These people can’t stand up for a minute before machine guns. It isn’t in them. In the first place, they haven’t more than six or eight rounds of ammunition apiece, and you know you can’t make war with six rounds of ammunition. But I don’t care though they had a million rounds—they simply cannot stand up. There’s no reason why they should. There’s no patriotism, no principle among them. They’re merely out for a little loot. If you tie our hands, and give the country over to this gang, Cuba will stink to heaven before many months are over.’

“But it was no use. Palma had to go, and now we don’t know what lies before us.

“It isn’t that the Cubans aren’t fit for political life. Many of them are, perfectly. But with the ignorant negro and low white vote, there is no saying what may happen.

“I wish to heaven President Roosevelt had just added a few words of postscript to his message to the Cubans. If he had only said, ‘Though we intend that Cuba shall have honest self-government, we don’t propose to put up with revolutions,’ all would have been well.”

A cloudlessly hot Sunday afternoon in Havana—I am lounging in the Parque Central, when I observe a poster announcing that a game of “Jai Alai” is at that moment in progress. The very intelligent “Standard Guide to Havana,” sold by Mr. Foster (the Cook of Cuba), notes this “famous gambling game” as one of the sights of the city; so I charter a cab, and jog through the baking streets to the “Frontón” in which it is played. You first enter a long and evil-smelling hall, with various refreshment bars, like the lower regions of a hippodrome; and then you pass into the “Frontón” itself. Imagine an amphitheatre sliced in two at its longitudinal axis; one half retained, with its shape unaltered, to serve as the auditorium; the other half converted into a titanic racquet court, 175 ft. long, 36 ft. deep, and (I imagine) something like 40 ft. high. The long wall, of course, fronts the audience, the two short walls close in the ends. The floor of the immense court is made of smooth and almost shining concrete; the walls are of stone, painted chocolate colour, and the long wall is marked off by perpendicular lines into seventeen compartments. The purpose of this I did not understand, for play takes place, not against this back wall, but up and down the whole length of the great court. Imagine, now, the great auditorium, tier on tier, filled with a vast crowd of excited, shouting, cheering men (there were only about a dozen women present), while bookmakers in red Basque caps move up and down in front of the first tier of seats, and permeate the higher tiers as well, yelling the odds in their raucous voices. As a vehicle for betting “Jai Alai” is generally recognized as “a curse to the community,” and the American Governor has been much blamed for tolerating it. But in itself,—as an exercise of skill, endurance, strength, agility, and grace—I do not hesitate to call it out and away the finest game I ever saw.

Readers who have been to Spain may recognize this as the Basque game of pelota. |“Partido” and “Quiniela.”| I had heard its name; but certainly its extraordinary merits had never reached my cars. Probably it is too difficult for the ordinary amateur; the professionals whom I saw are engaged at large salaries, and showed marvellous skill. But as a mere spectacle I should think it would prove attractive anywhere.^[73] The game is perfectly simple to understand, and there is never a dull moment in it, except the few moments of rest which the players allow themselves. Here is my guide-book’s account of it:—

The quiniela seemed to me more graceful and beautiful than the partido, or foursome, if not quite so exciting. The players wear the simplest costume—white drill trousers and either white or blue shirts. For a long time I was puzzled to think what familiar object the “cesta” recalled to me; but at last I hit on it—the thing is for all the world like those wicker guards which linkmen put over hansom-wheels, to save the gowns of ladies in alighting. The basket is, I take it, about two feet long. When a player lets his arm drop from the shoulder, the tip of the “cesta” is about level with his ankle.

Now, how shall I describe the actual play? It is racquets enormously magnified, and carried to an almost superhuman pitch of skill. Only once does the player touch the ball with his hand, and that is in leading off. |Playing the Game.| Standing about the middle of the court, he drops the ball on the floor, catches it with his “cesta” in the rebound, and sends it whizzing against the end wall. It flies back like a streak of lightning, and instantly one of the other side has it in his “cesta,” makes two or three leaps to give himself impetus, and hurls it again at the end wall. This time it is not improbable that he has put such force into his cast that the ball rebounds the whole 175 feet, strikes the opposite wall, and flashes down to the floor. Then one of his opponents must be ready to take it on the hop, and, reinforcing its movement, to send it flying once more against the end wall, of course doing his best to “place” it awkwardly for the other side. I have seen the ball returned thirty times in a single rally; but the average number would probably be some twelve or fifteen. And almost every catch and return seemed an incredible feat of skill. Just consider: here is a space of 6300 square feet, and only two players on each side—in the quiniela only one. What astounding rapidity of eye and agility of limb it must take to be always at the right spot to catch a little demon of a ball, that tears flashing about the court like a thing possessed! And the men are almost always at the right spot. They may misplace the ball or send it “out;” but it is the rarest thing for the ball to escape them entirely. They run, they leap, they make the most amazing whirling strokes; if the ball comes very low, they fall down, and often hurl it with the greatest accuracy from the most unconventional positions on the ground. Not once but hundreds of times that afternoon did I see things done that looked absolutely impossible. Perhaps their variety of resource is their most astonishing quality. But, wonderful as it all is, it is still more beautiful. With all their rapidity, their grace is perfect, like that of lithe, resilient, feline animals. If anything more marvellous or more graceful was done at the Olympic games, then the Greeks were athletes indeed.

Certainly, if one wanted to gamble, “Jai Alai” provides an intensely exciting method of doing so. |The Fluctuating Odds.| In one partido that I saw it seemed at first that the “blancos” entirely outclassed the “azules.” They gained about 8 points to their rivals’ 3—the game being 30 up. But gradually the blues crept forward, until at 14 they tied. Then the whites spurted, and presently the score was 24-19. But again the blues pulled themselves together, and at 26 they again tied. The whites, however, were the better team, and in the end won by 2 points. Of course, at every fluctuation of the score, the odds varied: when the twenties were reached the betting became fast and furious, and both bookmakers and their “clients” shouted themselves distracted. But there is no reason in the nature of things why this exquisitely beautiful game should be “soiled with all ignoble use.” How amazing is the brutality of taste that can prefer the bull-fight to pelota!

Allowing time for a few hours’ stay at Matanzas, the journey from Havana to Santiago di Cuba occupies two days and a night. At Matanzas, a town in itself of no great interest, it is well worth while to climb to the hermitage of Montserrate, which overlooks to the westward the Yumuri valley, a great semicircular basin in the hills, and to the eastward a magnificent sweep of sea and shore. The endless colonnades of palm-trees give to the distant slopes an exquisite tone of silver-blue such as I have never seen anywhere else. On the whole, however, the Cuban landscape, as it presents itself between Havana and Santiago, is rich and spacious rather than specially beautiful. Its characteristic aspect is that of wide and fertile plains, with ranges of high hills, or low mountains, in the distance, dappled with the shadows of the clouds; but in the central province of Camaguëy the hills disappear, and the plains become rather uninteresting, and to a considerable extent unimproved. The general impression of fertility is very striking. The soil is often of such a rich red or chocolate colour that it seems as though an artist need only mix a little oil with it and transfer it to his canvas. The species of palm which prevails in Cuba has an unfortunate tendency to bulge in the wrong place, and assume a bottle-like contour, which is fatal to the beauty of the individual trees. Patches of inextricable jungle are not infrequent in the central districts, and suggest a use for the huge, broad cutlasses—the machetes—with which the negro peasantry are generally armed. As the line bends southward to Santiago, I fancy that the scenery becomes more mountainous and picturesque; but we ran through it in the dark. I retain only an impression of dense forests jewelled with myriads of fire-flies, while some sort of cricket or cicala made a pleasant tinkling sound, as though of running water.

Santiago I take to be one of the hottest places in the universe. |Santiago to Kingston.| It is set in a vast basin of splendid hills, the bottom of the basin being formed by the lake-like expanse of the historic harbour. The gulf or fiord so narrows towards its mouth that no sign of the open sea is visible, and no breath of sea breeze seems ever to stir the mirror-like surface of the lake. The red roofs of the town climb up the hill from the water’s edge, and seem to glow and flame in the fierce sunlight. One envied the little brown and yellow urchins running about stark naked in the shady side-streets. If they wore anything at all, it was a necklace—an amulet or charm, as I conceive.^[74]

From Santiago I took ship for Jamaica on the S.S. Oteri, the most uncomfortable vessel on which I ever set foot. It belongs, I am told, to the Cuba Eastern Railroad, which is largely an English company. Surely it would pay them to assign a habitable ship to the service, and thus encourage travellers to adopt this otherwise delightful route.

Over the passage I draw a veil. We wound our way down the narrow neck of the fiord (sacred to the memory of the heroic Hobson), passed under the bluff crowned by the bastions of Morro Castle, and plunged into the rollers of a marvellous sapphire sea. From that time, I remember nothing for about eighteen hours, except the truly infernal heat of a grimy little oven, facetiously described as a stateroom. Next morning, when I came on deck, the blue mountains of Jamaica were towering over us, and we were heading for the low spit of Port Royal, which forms, as it were, the breakwater of Kingston Harbour.

Of Jamaica I shall say very little, for the simple reason that my feelings concerning it are beyond expression. |The City Desolate.| The burden of my message is, “Go and see it.” Until you have crossed the Blue Mountain range of this incomparable island you do not know what Nature can achieve in the creation of pure beauty. In Italy Nature is helped out by art, by architecture, by the magic of antiquity, by all sorts of historic associations; and it would, of course, be ridiculous to under-value these advantages. Here beauty has no such adjuncts; if it is enhanced at all by the intervention of man, it is by mere accident. Comparison, then, is futile; but with the liveliest memory of many of the loveliest scenes in Italy, I say deliberately that I did not know what pure beauty meant until I visited Jamaica.

But I did not learn it in Kingston. Rebuilding had scarcely begun in that luckless city, which can at no time, I fancy, be very attractive. It was, to put it briefly, the abomination of desolation. The heat in the long, straight streets was torrid; and all the mortar that ought to have been in the house-walls was blowing about in the form of scorching and stinging dust-clouds. So I presently shook the dust of Kingston, not so much off my feet as out of my eyes and lungs, and (under the advice of kind friends at King’s House), set forth on a short tour, of which the first stage was a railway journey to Port Antonio.

Never shall I forget that afternoon. |A Midsummer Day’s Dream.| Perhaps it impressed me the more because I had not been led to expect anything unusually beautiful. Between Kingston and the old capital, Spanish Town, the route was of no great interest; but no sooner had the train passed Spanish Town, and begun to creep up into the hills which form the backbone of the island, than I found myself in a valley of enchantment. A gorge rather than a valley—a winding, Highland glen, with a clear blue river flowing musically down its rocky bed, and a white road following the curves of the stream. Everywhere were glorious forest trees and slender palms—very different from the paunchy Cuban species—with an underwood of the richest tropical growths. The banana groves, sometimes mixed with orange trees, were numberless, and at almost every turn huge clumps of feathery bamboos were mirrored in the stream. The giant limbs of the forest trees were often clad for their whole length with the tender green of thick-clustering ferns. As for the temperature, it was perfection. I can only describe it by a contradiction in terms—very warm and yet beautifully cool—whereby I mean that, though the thermometer was doubtless high, the delicate freshness of the air, the clearness of the water, and the depth of the green shadows through which we were running, produced a perfect illusion of coolness. Slowly as the train meandered along, it went far too fast for me. I was tortured by a desire to linger, to get out and walk, to fix in my mind some of the ever-shifting aspects of beauty. Presently—all too soon—we reached the top of the pass and began to wind down the wider valley on the other side. Beneath jag-toothed mountain walls in the grey distance, spread a labyrinth of crinkly hills, all tending to a pyramidal form, and many of them crowned with red-roofed cabins or wattle huts. Down their corrugations flowed exquisitely limpid brooks, and up their sides climbed forests of broad-leaved bananas. On every hand were palms, oranges, and brilliant flowering shrubs. It gave one an odd little shock to see at a wayside station, amid all this wealth of tropical colour, a patch of homely British vermilion in the shape of a mail-cart inscribed with the familiar “E.R.” At times the train would plunge into tunnels, just long enough to afford a pleasant pause in the overpowering feast of beauty; then out again to serpentine along amid fairy dells and dingles each lovelier than the last. As we drew downwards, the noble mountain background began to flush in the evening light; and at last we ran out into the wide bed of a torrent debouching in a sweep of purple sea. This was Annotto Bay; whence the line skirts round headland after headland of the romantic coast to the bright little town of Port Antonio.

Here I spent a perfect tropical day. |At Port Antonio.| The great American caravanserai on the promontory between the two bays was closed; so I went to the pleasant little Waverley Hotel on the neck of land at the base of the promontory. Through the still hot hours of blazing sunlight, I sat in the airiest of attire on a shady verandah, writing some of the foregoing pages, while the vulture-like “John Crows” wheeled solemnly around, in sedulous devotion to their craft of scavenging. The waters of the smaller bay were lapping at my feet; and I looked out over their blue expanse to a little red-and-white light-house on the opposite head-land, and the white walls of an American millionaire’s villa gleaming through a forest of palms. In the cool of the afternoon, I climbed to a small plantation on the top of a hill some seven or eight hundred feet high, almost perpendicularly overhanging the town. Nothing more glorious can be conceived than the falling of the purple twilight over the innumerable folds of the foothills filling the bottom of the great basin of mountains to the south; while northward lay the measureless expanse of the sleeping Spanish Main. It was a scene of sheer enchantment. I lingered until the great stars began to blaze in the crystal deeps of heaven; then took my way downward, unutterably moved, as by some august and gorgeous ritual. In the town, the lamplight was glowing through the walls of the houses—for here, as often as not, the walls are of pivoted slats which open and close like Venetian blinds. The streets were swarming with a dusky throng, and a band of black Salvationists was making an unholy clatter under the star-sown silences.

But I must cut short my Jamaican raptures, and not attempt to express the inexpressible. Starting from Buff Bay the next morning, at seven o’clock, under the guidance of a negro whoso regal name was Clovis, I rode all day long up a valley of paradise, into the heart of the mountains. |A Valley of Paradise.| Sometimes, when the road skirted a ravine, we would look down a hundred feet or so, and see shining brown bodies plashing about in the silver pools, flecked with sunlight through the overarching palms. More than once, in some sequestered nook, we came upon a negro family party performing an elaborate go-to-meeting toilet—for it happened to be Sunday, and the road was populous with worshippers, all of whom gave us a grinning good-day. While we took our midday rest at a hospitable plantation, half ruined by the earthquake, a deluge of rain came down and lasted over an hour; but when we rode forward—now on a mere bridle-path winding along the sides of often precipitous gorges—it was wonderful to see the clouds rolling up like giant curtains from the glittering mountain-sides. On we clambered over the watershed, and a little way down the southern valley, to the plantation of Chester Vale, 3000 feet high. There I spent several delightful days of work and mountain wandering, on which I must not allow myself to enlarge. Almost every afternoon—for it was the rainy season—there came a tropical downpour. But rain itself, in this climate, is a thing of beauty and of joy; and as for the lifting of the clouds and breaking through of the evening sun, who shall describe the splendours of the spectacle? Perhaps the most beautiful of all my experiences was an early morning ride from Chester Vale along the ridge to Newcastle, on my way back to Kingston. Such ferns, such exquisite wild flowers, as lined the path, I have seen nowhere else; and the view from our shady fringe of the forest, over the sunbathed valley fading away to the northern sea, was sumptuous in the extreme.

I cannot better sum up my impressions of Jamaica than by saying that there was scarcely an hour of my brief stay in the island which I would not willingly have prolonged indefinitely. Again and again—many times in the day—I would feel, “Why cannot the sun stand still? Why must this marvellous moment pass away before I have absorbed a hundredth part of its beauty? Why is there no means of ‘fixing’ on the memory, as on a photographic plate, the details of this heavenly scene?” We have all, I suppose, experienced these moments of exasperation at the tyrannous march of time; but I have never known them come crowding upon me as they did in Jamaica. In a very real sense, the island is too lovely; one is sated, surfeited with beauty. I should hesitate to live there, lest perchance I should sicken of Nature’s prodigality. But for a month or two, or for a winter, nothing could be more fascinating. And Jamaica, in my experience, has few or none of the usual draw-backs of the tropics—poisonous insects, snakes, and so forth. It is the nearest conceivable approach to an earthly Paradise. It is a fragment of Fairyland.

To confess the truth, I was too much occupied in sheer enjoyment of life during my stay in Jamaica to pursue with any ardour my researches into the race-problem. |Black, White, and Coloured.| But I saw enough to realize the heaven-wide difference between this black community, administered by a benevolent but scarcely qualified despotism, and the piebald democracies of the Southern States. There were in Jamaica, in 1905, 15,000 whites, ten times as many “coloured” people (that is to say mulattoes), and nearly 630,000 blacks. In other words, the white population of the island is smaller than that of Rugby, the non-white population is larger than that of Manchester and Salford. There are fifty-five non-whites to every one white. Moreover, the terms of the enumeration point to a characteristic difference between the United States and Jamaica. In America, every one with the smallest strain of African blood is black, though he may, in fact, be as white as George Washington. “Coloured man” and “negro” are synonymous, there being no legal, social, or statistical distinction between the pure black and the mulatto. We have seen how impossible it is to arrive at anything but a merely conjectural estimate of the relative numbers of the pure and mixed breeds. But in the West Indies “coloured”“coloured” means “not black” as clearly as it means “not white.” The “coloured” population is a middle class between the white aristocracy and the black proletariat; and whereas in America there is almost complete solidarity of feeling and interest between the mulatto and the negro, I am told that in the West Indies the “coloured” man despises the “nigger,” and feels himself immeasurably his social superior.^[75]

This means that no real race-problem exists in Jamaica. There may be a certain amount of marginal friction and unpleasantness where the coloured population, the intermediate stratum, touches the black basis of society on the one hand, and the white upper-crust on the other; but these difficulties are not essentially different from those which necessarily arise in any community which includes a large class of indeterminate social standing. There is, in fact, none of thatthat race rivalry which declares itself where two races are practically equal in numbers and theoretically equal in political status. The integrity and the social position of the white race are absolutely unthreatened. They are, like the English in India, a small body of “sahibs” in a non-white country. The situation in Jamaica, in fact, has scarcely an element in common with that of the Southern States.

There are, I believe, some slight stirrings of democratic ambition, and of resentment at their lack of political rights, among the Jamaican populace—especially in the small class of urban negroes. |Let Well Alone?| It would be absurd for me to offer an opinion as to whether they have any substantial and practical grievance. But I confess I could not work up any enthusiasm for the “elevation” of the Jamaican masses. Beyond a little better sanitation, I do not know what they want. They seemed as happy as South Sea Islanders, and much more tenacious of life. Both the coloured population and the black population have nearly doubled within the past half-century. From the point of view of the white employer, no doubt, it is highly desirable that, as Mr. Booker Washington puts it, they should “want more wants:” more civilization would mean more stability and industry, with less inclination to “prædial larcenylarceny.” But from the point of view of the black man himself, the benefits of progress seem far more questionable. I read without the appropriate sense of horror that “not more than half of the native population is effectively reached by religious and educational influences,” and that 60 per cent. of the births are illegitimate. It seems to me that the Jamaican negro enjoys all the advantages of the primitive life without its disadvantages, whereas the American negro (broadly speaking) is subjected to all the evils of civilization, while he receives but a disproportionate share of its benefits.

When, in New York, I was handed a sailing-list of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s boats, I observed that their first port of call, after Jamaica, was Colon. In vain I hurriedly searched the map of the Caribbean Sea, hoping to disguise my ignorance. I had to pocket my pride, and inquire, “Where is Colon?” Afterwards I discovered that Colon was a place of which I had often heard under its earlier name of Aspinwall; for my father, one of the Californian Argonauts, had twice crossed the Isthmus of Darien in the old days.

Under no conceivable name would Colon be an attractive place. It is situated on flat ground (formerly an island) at the bottom of a little bag of a bay; it consists of the ordinary jerry-built two-storey houses of a more or less improvised tropical sea-port; its fringe of palms is meagre and mangy; and it is backed by low and featureless wooded hills.

But, as we steam slowly up to the jetty, what is this cluster of some twenty or thirty neat new houses, under a grove of palm-trees away to the right? There is something odd about them, something dark and blind-looking; they seem to have neither windows nor doors. After a little searching of spirit, I realize what they suggest to me—they are like a row of giant meat-safes.

And there, at the point of the spit of land, is a statue—a group of two figures. Now I know where I am, for I have been reading things up a little. This must be the statue of Columbus embracing an Indian maiden, presented by the Empress Eugénie in the palmy days of French ambition regarding the Isthmus; and the houses behind it must be those of the American officials in the settlement of Cristobal, a suburb of Colon.

One soon learns to appreciate the “screened” houses of the Canal Zone, with their verandahs enclosed in an impervious veil of wire gauze. But outwardly, and especially at a distance, they are not things of beauty.

Three minutes in the broiling streets of Colon were quite enough for me. I have seen frontier settlements before now; and Colon, though it has a sort of a history, is at present, to all intents and purposes, a frontier settlement. “Do you know Port Said?” a resident said to me; “Well, this place is just about 50 per cent. wickeder.” I think the resident (with pardonable partiality) exaggerated a little; but the aspect of Colon, even by day, was quite sufficiently sinister.

Besides, I had an important introduction to present at Panama; so I took the first train thither. This railway, or at any rate a railway more or less on the line of this one, was built in the ’fifties, and is said to have cost a life for every tie (Anglice, sleeper). Literal-minded persons question this statement; to me it seems entirely probable. For if ever there was a pestiferous-looking region, it is this land of swamp and jungle and blood-red river. Though I knew that science had practically annulled the evil spell that had so long rested on it, there were still places which I could scarcely look at without a shudder.

Of course the Canal works, and the settlements of the workers, give an air of great animation to many points on the line. But apart from these I saw not a single sign of life on the whole route; not a square inch of cultivation, not a man or woman who looked like a peasant of the region; only a few undaunted cattle browsing here and there in the swamps. And every here and there, to add to the desolation, lay great pieces of machinery—travelling cranes, trucks, even engines—overturned by the wayside and half submerged in jungle. They were relics of the French fiasco, the abandoned impedimenta of De Lesseps’ Moscow. I have seen few more tragic spectacles.

Here let me say, however, that intelligent Americans speak with great respect of their French predecessors. “Consider the difficulties they had to deal with,” a high official said to me—“difficulties that we have had practically swept away for us! They knew nothing of tropical hygiene, and malaria and yellow fever had it all their own way with them. They knew nothing of cold storage, and the problem of supply was practically insoluble. Considering all these circumstances, it is wonderful what they did, and did well. If it bears a small proportion to the £50,000,000, more or less, that were sunk in the enterprise, you must remember that probably not half that sum of money ever got to the Isthmus. Their material was all excellent. We use a considerable amount of it to this day. We have dug many of their locomotives out of the jungle, and found them practically as good as new. When we took over the business, there was a great outcry over the £8,000,000 we paid to the French Company. People said it was grossly extravagant; but we have found that the bargain was a good one.” Despite all alteration of plans, I gather that about half the excavation actually made by the French has proved, or will prove, useful.

As one leaves the station at Panama, one fears that it is to prove a second Colon. |A Sanitary Campaign.| Here are the same two-storey shanties, half of them, it would seem, drinking-bars, and the other half miscellaneous stores, kept by the ubiquitous Ah Sin and Wong Lee. But after half a mile or so of this Hispano-Americano-Chinatown, the Avenida Central leads one into the moderately old and not quite uninteresting Spanish city, with its Plaza, its twin-towered Cathedral, and its fort. And when you get to the fort, you find yourself on the central promontory of one of the most beautiful bays in the world; but of this more anon, from another point of view.

The towns of Panama and Colon are specially excluded from the Canal Zone—the strip of territory extending five miles on each side of the Canal, which the United States has bought from the Republic of Panama for £2,000,000. But even in these two towns the Americans have undertaken the work of paving and sanitation; the outlay to be repaid by instalments extending over fifty years. So they have repeated here the drastic cleaning-up which they have effected in Havana, even outraging the feelings of the natives by abolishing the domestic rain-water butt, the breeding-place of the “Anopheles” and “Stegomyia” mosquitos—disseminators, respectively of malaria and yellow fever. It is mainly, though of course not entirely, by waging war upon these insects that the now almost perfect sanitation of the Canal Zone has been secured. And it is in order to exclude them from the happy home that all the I.C.C.—Isthmian Canal Commission—houses are “screened” with wire gauze.

To one of these houses, in the suburb of Ancon, I drove in the early afternoon, and presented my introduction, which was honoured with true American cordiality. Once within the gauze fortification (and the door shuts behind you with a spring, lest you should inadvertently admit a casual Anopheles) you find yourself in a delightfully arranged tropical house, with dining-room and drawing-room opening off a central hall, and with the spacious verandah affording what is equivalent to another suite of rooms. It is built entirely of hardwood, painted in white and shades of green, and is as cool and airy as heart can desire. From within, the “screen” is scarcely noticeable; in the normal Panama weather, indeed, it merely softens agreeably the glare of the sun outside.

“Is this,” I asked, “the famous house that was built in some incredibly short space of time?”

“Yes,” said my host, laughing. “That story has got around a good deal, but it has the merit of being true. When the house was begun, I saw that the workmen were simply dilly-dallying over it and making no way. I spoke to our chief, Colonel Goethals, about it, and he came over and looked at the preparations, so far as they had gone. He said to the overseer: ‘This house must be finished and ready for occupation on the 15th of November’—just six weeks ahead. The overseer pulled a very long face, and said, ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’ ‘That was not my order,’ said Colonel Goethals. ‘I did not tell you to do your best—I told you to have the house finished.’ And finished it was, in just thirty-six working days.”

After taking me for a most interesting drive in the environs of Ancon, my host was compelled, by a previous engagement, to leave me to myself for the rest of the evening. |“A Peak in Darien.”| I did the obvious thing, which was to climb Ancon Hill at sunset. To do so you have first to wind your way through the beautifully situated hospital buildings, all, of course, carefully screened in gauze. Straying a little from the proper road, I came across a lumber-yard, outside of which I was a little startled to find a pile of some fifty coffins of assorted sizes. These, too, might, I thought, have been “screened” without disadvantage to the spirits of the community.

A stiff climb of about half an hour brought me to the top of Ancon Hill, and disclosed one of the loveliest views I have ever seen. Immediately below lay the town of Panama on its promontory. To the left a huge bay curved outward, with a magnificent sweep, and beyond it range on range of mountains grew ever dimmer and more distant as they faded away into South America. To the right of Panama lay the smaller bay of La Boca, in which the canal will actually debouch, studded with beautiful mountainous islands, not at all unlike those of the bay of Naples, on a smaller scale. It was a glorious scene; and a white American cruiser lying out in the anchorage gave a pleasant touch of life to it.

Observe that I have said “to the left” and “to the right” of Panama, not to the south and to the north; for the orientation here is extremely puzzling. I naturally expected to see the sun set over the Pacific; but, to my great surprise, there seemed to be no sun in the heavens in that direction. Yet the light proved that a sunset was going on somewhere; and, turning inland, I found the luminary engaged in sinking behind the mountains of the Isthmus—to the eastward it seemed to me. A study of a large-scale map may show the reason for this paradox—I shall not attempt to expound it.

The Isthmian Canal Commission has built and runs a delightful tropical hotel at Ancon, called—heaven knows why—the Tivoli. |The Tivoli Hotel.| Even the negro waiters wear at their belt the brazen badges or checks showing their numbers on the I.C.C. pay-list. Salaries are paid to numbers, not to names. Many of the labourers have no ascertainable, or no spellable, name; many change their names as the fancy strikes them; but their badge identifies them at once.

The telephone in my bedroom rang at 5.30 the next morning, for I had to catch a train at 6.35 to meet my Ancon friend at Culebra, several stations down the line. On the way, I saw a gang of black convicts working at an embankment. The black and white stripes of their trousers were conspicuous: less conspicuous the chain attaching one leg of each man to a large bullet. A negro in khaki uniform stood sentry over them with fixed bayonet.

There is, it appears, surprisingly little serious crime in the Zone. There are three district judges, who, sitting in banc, form a supreme court. Trial by jury has recently been introduced, on the theory that the Constitution follows the flag. Two cases have been tried by jury: in the first a white man was acquitted who ought (said my informant) to have been found guilty; in the second, a negro was (justly) convicted with promptitude and despatch.

After breakfast at the delightful house of one of the officials at Culebra, my kind cicerone and I sallied forth to visit the famous Culebra Cut. But, while waiting for our motor to appear, he showed me two of the characteristic institutions of the Zone.